Where Shall I Go?
by phantomwriter05
Summary: On a quiet December night, the Connors are left to their thoughts for a night as they search for some peace in their unstable lives. Jameron, Sarah/Derek. One Shot


_**This is the final one shot I'll be writing for this story series and will be the final time Future!Ryan will ever be written by me. **_

_**Interesting story … what you guys don't know is that this is actually a lost chapter of "Because the Night" and has been missing for over a year and was about sixty-five percent complete when I recently found it and decided to add to it. **_

_**So guys who have read "Because the Night" … why should you read this? Because the concepts introduced into this one shot is heavy handed foreshadowing for the final installment of the epilogue. what's in here will be important in the finale. **_

_**Before I scare away new readers you DO NOT have to read "Because the Night" to understand what's going on. **_

_**Enjoy it …**_

**Where Shall I Go?**

The purple and orange painted sky was the backdrop for the mountain ranges and tall skyscrapers of the city skyline in the mid December chill of the beautiful Southern California evening. It was a quiet moment that Sarah Connor watched with misty eyes.

She couldn't say why she was so emotional tonight; maybe it had been her revisit to Pescadero recently, and the memories of the criminal asylum. But when she looked at the beauty of something it made her so melancholy to see something so moving, and yet, unable to enjoy it. The wind blew her shoulder-length, black curls back, and she closed her eyes feeling the caress of an invisible hand comfortingly stroking her cheek. The cold gave a dull ache to her mending broken wrist, a small price for freedom from her captor with the vultures face and dark lustful eyes. It made her shiver to think of the man, and the almost sadistic pleasure he gained from seeing her in pain and making her suffer. He was a true psychopath, she thought.

Suddenly voices carried outside from the kitchen.

"_What the hell is that?" _

"_My contribution to dinner tonight …" _

"_Looks nasty …" _

"_Hey, hillbilly I've seen you eat a twenty-year-old bag of potato chips, so back the hell off her." _

"_Screw you, they were sealed air tight." _

"_Yeah, Derek, I didn't see you help with dinner." _

"_And what did you do?" _

"_I set the table …" _

"_Oh … well let me tell you, the forks look just in the right place." _

"_Yeah, sorry, your metal is still being polished, you can pick it up tomorrow in the ladies room." _

"_Screw you guys …" _

Sarah sniffled and sighed, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her grey collarless long-sleeve that was just off her shoulders. She turned to the sound of bickering; steadying her breath she walked through the door to the terrace, and back into the kitchen.

Cameron was standing at the sink with Ryan, who was lifting the side of his navy-blue t-shirt as the cyborg applied some strange paste out of a small bowl on a gash just under his ribs. He squinched his face in pain as the cyborg worked gently. John was moving out of the room, with the pot of Sarah's spaghetti, to the dinner table.

"You should know better than to engage a trained mercenary in such condition." Cameron was chastising quietly in a manner that Sarah could only imagine somewhere in the back of her head as maternal.

Ryan grinded his teeth and winced hard before he caught Sarah's presence. "Yeah …" He grunted. There was something in his golden-flecked eyes that carried a flicker of guilt, as if he had somehow let her down. "Now I've got a wound to remind me!" He said to Sarah in a quiet voice, forgetting that Cameron was in the room with them.

Sarah's eyes lightened, and she opened her mouth to say something to sooth the emotion directed at her, but the man stepped away from the cyborg's reach and tossed his shirt down with a hiss, as if not wanting to hear what Sarah was going to say to him.

Cameron glared. "We're not done." Her voice was commanding.

The older man rotated his arm in discomfort. "Yeah we are …" He replied quietly and began walking to the dining room, trying to avoid bright green eyes haunting his steps.

"You can get an infection … then what?" the cyborg called with a voice that echoed the ghost of frustration.

"We all know how you like 'I told you so' …" The deep voice called from the table.

Sarah recognized the half annoyed scowl that came over the girls face as she put the paste on the counter tightening her cheek. When she noticed Sarah her face went blank, as if the little tidbits of personality were a secret that was only for a few, Sarah Connor not being one of them.

"Dinner is on the table." She reported emotionlessly. The raven haired woman glared at her.

"Really?" She sighed sarcastically at the obvious observations that the cyborg always deemed necessary to point out. When the girl tilted her head, the woman scoffed and blew passed the machine into the dining room.

"Christ, you stare at the phone screen anymore it's gonna put a restraining order on you, John."

"What the hell's your problem, Derek?"

"Yeah, you forget to take your Midol today?"

John was sitting on his usual side, flipping his phone shut, glaring at his uncle. Ryan sat in a spot close to Cameron, separating her from the soldier at the head of table. Derek looked better than he had in weeks. He was less pale, and it looked like he had learned to control the pain from his now crippled leg which had been crushed by a falling cinderblock. It made Sarah guilty knowing that he had hurt himself shielding her with his body from the falling debris of the collapsing front wall of Pescadero.

"Do we have to wait for the bitching to be over before we can eat?" Sarah glared at the guys at her table, smelling Cameron's intoxicating perfume as the girl passed Sarah and settled in her spot between John and Ryan.

"Hah …" John laughed mockingly. "If that's the case then we'd never eat." He pocketed his phone, flashing a smug grin at his uncle who sneered at his nephew. Sarah rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and sat at the head of the table across from Derek.

Taking the scoop, the eldest Reese served Sarah first like always, then John, making sure to give the boy a bigger portion than others. It never failed to make Sarah feel a tug at her heart to think that Derek worried that John had enough to eat. But when Derek moved to serve himself, Ryan placed his plate over Derek's. The older soldier didn't make a sound of protest dumping the noodles on the former officer's plate. But when he was done he gave a sideways narrow of hazel eyes, the raven haired man just gave a cheeky wink, and with a pirate grin began to dig into his food.

Sarah smiled into her glass of lemonade, but it disappeared right on time as both Ryan and John made about the exact same face as they ate her tweaked recipe. It was a slow chew with a disturbed, pensive face that made it look like they had Rosie O'Donnell doing a strip tease in their head. John had a lifetime of experience with his mother's cooking, and had become so in tune with covering that he could make Sarah out as the new Bettie Crocker under intense KGB interrogation if need be.

"So how is it, Ryan?" Sarah asked cattily with a loud tap of her glass. Ryan chewed slowly and swallowed hard.

"As compared …?" He trailed off.

The women frowned. "Compared to the food in the future." There was a dangerous undertone to her voice.

He moved the plate away from him. "Missing it …" He reached for his glass. Sarah was angry with him until she actually tasted it, and realized that she had confused the salt with sugar, which in hindsight she couldn't remember why she tried put salt in it anyway. Not giving the people at table the satisfaction, she forced down the sickly sweet spaghetti.

Derek was the only one who was eating it like nothing was amiss; he was always eating whatever Sarah put in front of him. He had become a man in a place where it was a struggle just to eat something every day, so there was no such thing as "Bad cooking" in his eyes. Ryan had come from the same future, but then the man was raised by John Connor leader of the future and most likely would have had a leg up on most post J-Day survivors, Sarah thought.

Seeing the opportunity, Cameron looked around before picking up a bowl filled with chocolate-covered mini-chunks that looked like raisins. "I made these … if you want some." She offered.

John quirked an eyebrow at his companion and shrugged, reached over and took one. Ryan and Sarah both reached for one, after sharing a dependent look. Derek was the last, chewing on the noodles stubbornly when everyone stared at him expectantly.

"I didn't sign on for this suicide pact." He shot at them, swallowing.

"Take one …" Cameron glared.

Clearing his throat, he sighed and took the smallest one he could find. There was a pause between all the humans at the table, everyone waiting for the other.

"You eat it …" Cameron leaned forward in her chair with a hopeful face, encouraging them. As if with a silent countdown everyone stuck it in their mouths and began to chew. There was a quiet moment as they experienced the flavor burst.

"Cameron … this is …" John chewed a moment longer to double check. "This is great." He said. The cyborg beamed proudly as everyone nodded in agreement, except Derek who shrugged in a "Meh" opinion.

"It's crunchy …" Sarah added in approval. "Like that candy in the movie theater." .

The machine watched John, Sarah and Ryan reach for more. "I wanted to get more protein in your diet, so I saw this on John's computer and bought it special in Chinatown … I glazed it with chocolate myself." She explained as they ate more of it.

"What is it?" John asked.

"Ants"

John's face fell and he stopped chewing, while Sarah spit out what she had in her mouth and glared bloody murder at the girl who suddenly looked lost at the reaction. Ryan snorted and swallowed what he had in his mouth shaking his head. Derek just looked annoyed at the rest of the table in an "I told you" look as he stole Ryan's plate. Both men had eaten far worse it seemed to Sarah.

"You fed us insects?" She growled at Cameron.

The girl frowned. "You eat meat. That use to be something that lived." She pushed.

"I can tell you about something else that's alive that's about not to be." The woman replied.

Ryan smiled. "I bet she'd taste a whole hell a lot better than the spaghetti." He challenged Sarah. She glared at him, while John ate the chocolate covered ant with a strangely satisfied face. However, Cameron looked down at her thin tank top and her body pensively, as if pondering if the organic sheath could pass as "Good grub".

Seeing the pensive look of genuine curiosity on the cyborg's face, Sarah gritted her teeth at Cameron. "You listen to me, no more exotic foods … no illegal Mexican turtles in our stew, no breaded pelican, and no goat eyeballs!" The sad thing was that Cameron had brought home all of the things Sarah had listed, taking Oprah's "cultural diversity is good in the kitchen" a little too much to heart.

For a moment the girl looked defensive, shrinking back in her chair. "John Connor freed the slaves … I can make turtle stew if I want too." She protested.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Abe Lincoln freed the slaves … not John." she added squashing the smug pride on her sons face.

Derek rolled his eyes. "Anyway John didn't free machines, he reprograms you, can't free what's not living in the first place." He added. There was something blank, and yet almost sad, on Cameron's face as she looked away.

"Shut up, Derek … No need to hurt your Ninth grader brain with the abstract concept of freedom." Ryan scoffed protectively.

But the man didn't back down, there was something ugly in his eyes when he saw the way John discreetly placed a comforting hand on Cameron's thigh. "Please, she's no more human than you are." He countered grudgingly.

The other officer glowered at Derek. "That statement has about as much meaning as your non-existent education. I'm about as human as the rest of you." He bit back angrily.

"Really? Cause the last time I checked my right eye doesn't glow in the dark." Derek countered coldly.

Ryan gave the eldest Reese boy a long dark look before he stood abruptly and stalked out of the dining room. They watched him collect his brown leather coat and Sarah's tactical shotgun. He slammed the door as he walked out onto the porch.

The glare Sarah had for Derek made him know that what he had said was ill done. But he didn't need it, because he regretfully looked down at his food. Sarah couldn't fully blame him, the pain in Derek's leg was intense and it made him strangely angry and hurtful as it passed. He always felt bad in the end, like he was now.

"Well …" He sighed. "You can all sleep soundly knowing that war hero, Captain Ryan C. Phillips, is guarding the perimeter tonight: keeping the Machines, Grays, Mexican Bandits … and deformed flesh eating mutants at bay." He mocked shaking his head at the door.

"Mutant flesh eating humans?" John repeated weirdly. Sarah frowned as well.

The man shrugged. "They're out there or used to be, up in the hills and mountains. Out in Utah especially, where all the radiation settled after J-day." Derek Reese snorted after a thought. "Nothing worse than a Cannibal Mormon." He chuckled, going back to his food. Sarah gave a slight grin of affection at him.

"Like the 'Hills have eyes'?" John asked, eating another one of Cameron's ants, though no one was sure if he knew consciously he was doing it or not. Either way, the cyborg scooted her, and the bowl, closer to the teen to watch him. Derek nodded his head with a mouthful of Ryan's food.

"Except they eat the mother after she gives birth to their baby." Cameron chimed in, watching John with a ghost of a smile.

Sarah grimaced at her son. "And you and Ryan fought them around here in the future?" she scrunched her face at the teens when Cameron ate one or two, joining her best friend.

The soldier swallowed. "Yeah, but we cleaned them out a long time ago, along with the bandits." He shrugged.

"How about _Steel_ … the two of you didn't get him." Cameron responded emotionlessly.

The looked the man gave the cyborg was one of anger at the mention of the name, and spurned pride. "No …" Derek agreed with a dark, intense outrage under a stone mask. "We never did get him." He shoveled noodles in his mouth.

"Who's Steel?" John asked.

"Slave trading, butchering rapist." Derek replied coldly.

"You, Derek and Ryan have chased him more than once in the future. He kidnapped, raped and murdered your second …" Cameron began.

"He wouldn't be around here anyway." Derek cut Cameron off with a dangerous stare. Sarah figured that whatever Cameron was going to tell John, it wasn't for his or her ears. "He's down in Northern Mexico … San Diego." He motioned south with his hand.

"If you cleaned 'them' out and Steel isn't around here, then why is Ryan out there almost every night?" Sarah asked.

Derek cleaned the sauce off his plate with some bread. "He was just a baby before the bombs dropped … I guess he's still living in the future, when there was some machine or bandit out there on the prowl in the dark to hunt. Old habits die hard." He shrugged.

The woman humored him with a tight smile, but kept her inner thoughts to herself as she looked down at her table cloth.

"_What's so different from now?"_

* * *

><p>The night was surprisingly still and quiet, which allowed the faint sound of a harmonica to carry from the woods of the nature trail, to the front porch where Sarah curled up on the bench watching the stars litter the sky like thousands of sequence on black-silk material. She closed her eyes, her fist resting against her chin as she listened, trying to remember if she had heard the song before. However she figured that there really wasn't any real structure to the music, just a bunch of notes that sounded good together. The playing was so mournful and sad that it almost physically hurt her to hear anymore, yet she couldn't leave.<p>

The house was empty, and yet, it wasn't. John, Derek and Cameron were inside, but they weren't around her or each other. A slow-lonesome feeling spread across her, one she knew often when she was a girl, alone in a big mansion with no one to talk to and no friends. Yet this lonesomeness was so different, and in a way hurt more than ever. This house wasn't so big, and all inside weren't Sarah's mother's servants. They were her family , however they avoided each other most nights. Too many things had happened over the past months that had damaged much of the family.

Now she sat outside on her porch listening to her grandchild play on his harmonica in the woods, too awkward to go over to sit and talk with him. Would it be so bad if he knew that she knew? Maybe Sarah wouldn't be so lonely if she just walked up to him? The thought came and went, and she decided best not to. She knew why the player was so down on himself tonight. In truth she had never seen anyone take losing a fight so hard in her life , however the guilt he carried with him made her feel young again, it had been many years since someone had taken it upon themselves to protect her.

The front door opened and she heard the clicking of a cane. Sarah scowled without looking, wondering what Derek wanted or was going to say that would piss her off. There was glass clinking against glass as she heard him grunt under his breath, the cane chaffing on the cold tile. He gave an unsteady thump on the cushion when he sat.

Sarah snapped her eyes open and turned to the man in surprised to find that he was offering her a beer bottle. She looked on suspiciously, but found herself smiling and nodding, taking the beverage from him. Both twisted the top off the bottles and gave a good long swig. Sarah Connor and Derek Reese didn't agree on much, but this beer was something they could always find common ground on.

"Saw you out here by yourself with that damn mopey face and thought you should get a good kick in the ass." He said clearing his throat; staring at the patterns on the orange tile.

Sarah glared, making a sucking sound when she pulled her lips from the bottle. "Well, if we go through enough of these you'll get your wish." She grunted looking at the label. The crippled soldier let out a breathy chuckle, which made her smile.

For a long while they listened to the harmonica music, the grudging silence slowly turning into a comfortable one. Sarah and Derek often switched back and forth from being angry at one another to not being able to see the day through without spending time together. Before Pescadero the two had kissed twice, and were almost together in a strange relationship, keeping each other at elbow's length. But after the incident at the asylum, and his injury, there was guilt that helped Sarah shun him, and pain made Derek a man that was tolerable on his best days. But it was nice now, almost back to the way it was in the old house, when she'd sit on the swing set late at night and he would come behind her and push. They didn't talk then, and they never acknowledged it happened. The almost nightly swing set meetings was their little secret that no one would ever know about. It would always be their place, just theirs.

"I shouldn't have said those things to the kid …" Derek said with a deeply regretful voice, looking up to the forest past the gravel driveway. "It … uh …" He sighed. "It wasn't right." He swigged his beer. Sarah agreed with a light nod.

She always found it funny how Derek called Ryan "The Kid" in private, especially since Ryan was only several years younger than him and Sarah. But then, if she remembered correctly, when Derek went across time to the present, Ryan had only been nineteen, and when they had last seen each other he was sixteen, now he was almost thirty. It seemed that there was a long gap in time between the men, and it showed when Derek treated him as they all did John.

"It's the leg …" Sarah said, looking down at the blue jean clad limb that was stretched straight out.

The scruffy man shook his head. "It's not an excuse." He corrected her.

"Didn't say it should be …" she countered, a little harsher than she had meant or wanted to. But whether she had meant it or not, Derek accepted the chastising, feeling he deserved it. When his stare turned down to his leg she didn't need to be a mind reader to know what was on it.

His leg would never heal right; Cameron had told him several days ago. She hadn't wanted to be the one tell him that, she had wanted John to do it; John was his family, and he knew how to be caring. But surprisingly, Derek had wanted the machine to tell him the devastating truth. He told them that he didn't want someone to force his blood to tell him what he had already known in his heart. He didn't want his own blood to feel the unfair pressure of telling him that he would never run, jump or stand without a cane again. It was the only time that Sarah had held Derek in her arms in front of John. The man didn't cry, he didn't get mad, he simply leaned his head against hers, while John placed a hand on his shoulder sadly.

Finally, after a long time, there were actually notes from the harmonica that sounded like a song. It had western-style flair to it and a little bit upbeat, though not by much. When Derek heard it, he made a half-amused, half-sorrowful chuckle at some depressing irony that Sarah didn't know about.

"There's something I haven't heard in a very long time." He said tapping his cane on the ground.

Sarah watched her companion with a quirked eyebrow. "The song?" She asked. Derek nodded and leaned back after sucking back some alcohol. Sarah listened quietly with amusement of a song that she didn't recognize.

"Oh I once was a cowboy and I used to run wild  
>And I rodeoed, and wrangled, and rambled in style"<p>

Sarah smiled as Derek began to sing. He had done it once before for her, and she would like to think in these quiet moments when it was just her and him that he only sang just for her. But her smile froze as the song continued.

"But I'm too old for horses, too old for the show  
>And I'm too young for heaven now where shall I go?<br>Where shall I go? Where shall I go?  
>I am too young for heaven, now where shall I go?"<p>

It broke Sarah's heart almost immediately when she heard the follow up lyrics. She couldn't place why, or what exactly it was about it that hurt her, but she felt like she had been hit by a train and her soul was smeared all over the tracks. The song paused as the harmonica picked up with a small solo that she could almost hear the western fiddle taking the place of the mouth organ.

"I once had a true love and I made her my wife,  
>And I swear I loved her near most of my life<br>But the cold of the winter and another's hand has her in tow  
>now she's gone from me, where shall I go?<p>

Where shall I go? Where shall I go?  
>My love is lost to me, now where shall I go?"<p>

As another harmonica solo interluded sounding like a lonesome fiddle, Sarah's eyes began to mist over. Trying not to let the man see them, she turned. The last lyrics made her certain that the song was about someone, or at least the last lyrics. She could imagine how much heartache it must take to write something like that, to have the one person you love more than anything be taken from you, and never be able to find them again.

"Oh, I never was a drunkard but this I will say  
>The taste of the whisky gets better each day<br>The bartender scowled you are drinking too slow  
>And we close in ten minutes, now where shall I go? Where shall I go? Where shall I go?<br>They close in ten minutes, now where shall I go?"

When Derek sang the last part she could hear in his slightly buzzed voice, the sound of commiseration with the lyrics. She had been noticing that he had been drinking a lot more, more than usual when he wasn't needed. Sarah knew that Derek couldn't, and wouldn't, be able to go on missions anymore, and she saw how one right push could send him down a dark path.

It stopped with the end of the last lyrics, and it seemed that the song was over as there was a deeply mournful pause. Derek let out a sad breath, it was a familiar pain that had settled in his bones, that he had long lived with since the death of his parents when he was younger than John.

"Now it's out in the evening with the stars burning bright  
>Nothing but memories to share with the night."<p>

He sang out alone into the dark, taking an emotional breath as he paused on cue, when the harmonica picked back up, playing the finale.

"Oh I once was a cowboy and I used to run wild  
>And I rodeoed, and wrangled, and rambled in style<br>But I'm too old for horses, too old for the show  
>And I'm too young for heaven, now where shall I go? Where shall I go? Where shall I go?<br>I am too young for heaven, now where shall I go?"

When the song ended there was a pause between the occupants on the bench as they let the air settle. Deep green eyes were watery and a pale throat was tight. Sarah tried hard to keep her emotions in check, but she couldn't help but sniffle loudly. It was enough for Derek to notice. He turned to look at her and when he saw the slightest glint of a tear he looked down.

"I'm sorry … you get used to hearing that damn old song and you forget how freakin depressing it is." He cleared his throat with a chuckle, trying to make her feel better without making it look like he was trying to make her feel better.

Sarah breathed with humor in the mist. "Depressing?" She asked. "Is that what they call it these days?" the woman cleared her eyes with her sleeves. Derek agreed silently with her assessment of his understatement.

After a few sparing moments in which the soldier gave her time to collect herself, she heard Derek's cane scratch the polished floor as he struggled to stand. She figured somewhere deep inside he felt bad for making her cry, and began to think that this was a bad idea to come out here with her.

"Who was the song about?" She found herself asking.

It was the pause in Derek's response that made her know he was lying. "It's an old song, way before they dropped the bombs on us." He replied with a grunt.

"Derek … who is the song about?" She pushed wanting to know the answer. "Who is it you think about when the men in Tech-Com sing it?" She wasn't sure why she wanted to know.

The man grunted. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to." He replied, shuffling his ass forward to stand. Sarah shot her hand out and took hold of the back of his shirt.

"Derek …" She didn't say anymore. The man stopped trying to stand and sighed.

"Sarah, I don't know if you want to hear this story …" He didn't look away from her.

She stared down at her jeans for a moment before she looked up. "Tell me" she said nodding with deeply serious eyes. It took a moment for Derek to think of the right way to tell her whatever it was he was going to say.

"In the future, John gets married." He stated getting comfortable again with slow pensive movements.

The statement caused Sarah to quirk an eyebrow. Of course John was going to get married; she had been living with his grown child for the last couple of weeks. She frowned at the man and waited for him to stop screwing around.

"Who was she?" Sarah curled up more comfortably.

"I don't know … I never met her, a lot of the guys that me and Kyle came up with never had either. The senior, senior command was the only people who ever really knew her." He shrugged. "All we've ever known is that she was very beautiful, and John's love for her was stuff myths are made of." He sighed.

Sarah looked out to the woods and brought Ryan's face to her mind and tried to put his features that weren't John's together in vain hope that she would be able to put together an image of this beauty Derek was telling her about. It seemed strange to her that the John she knew and loved could actually … well, fall in love. It had worried her to see the way he stared at the machine sometimes when he thought she wasn't looking, like she used to Kyle. So it made her happy to know that John will eventually find a real girl.

"The way it was told to me was that around this time of the year when Ryan was just a little kid something kidnapped her right out of base …" he leaned his head back looking out at the stars.

"Something?" She tilted her head. "A machine?" She asked.

Derek shook his head. "Some say it was a machine, others say it was some sort of _Monster_." Sarah thought for a moment that he had to be joking, but the serious look in his eyes told her that he was leaning away from the machine theory. On one hand she would scoff at him for believing in fairy tales, but then they locked her up for saying that machines were going to enslave humanity. One man's truth was another's fantasy.

"John dropped everything, resigned commission, locked and loaded up, took the kid in tow and went searching for her." He scratched his stubble. "They were gone for five years out in the fringes looking for her, and hunting the damn freak that took her." He shook his head. "I enlisted somewhere in between that time." He said looking distant.

"Did he find her?"

Sighing, Derek bit his lip. "No, He left looking for his wife, and came back with nothing but a _music box_." He was silent for a moment lost in memories. "I'll never forget the first time I met him. We were on patrol and this man came out of this observatory. He was a big son-of-a-bitch, tall, powerful. He had this weather beaten leather jacket on, and a satchel on his shoulder, but it was his eyes …" Derek trailed off.

Sarah had a hard time trying to imagine her son like that, when he was so scrawny and lovably goofy looking in a handsome sort of way. She leaned back. "His eyes?" She pried into his quiet moment.

"They were haunted … distant, almost crazed … he had seen things, and if the rumors were true, he did some things … he lost his mind somewhere out there, or so they say." Sarah found herself glaring.

"Rumors" She corrected Derek defensively, knowing what it was like to be accused of being out of her mind. But the man shook his head in dazed protest.

"You didn't see him …" He challenged. Rather than continue with the fight he pressed on "He and Ryan had a falling out somewhere out there in the wilderness. He had done something that had been so unforgivable it seemed to haunt their relationship." Derek rubbed his stubble.

Like what? Sarah had asked herself quietly looking off in the distance. Thinking back to her youth, Sarah had done many things that tested her and John's relationship. But after all these years she couldn't see anything John could do that could harm them. She didn't like going to that place in her mind, but she had to admit that even if John was a serial Killer, she couldn't see herself do anything but help him bury the bodies. So, with that in mind, it was almost foreign concept just what her son had done to alienate his. There was only one person who knew that answer, and it would be very unwise to ask him about it, she thought.

"The years went by and eventually Ryan showed up again also empty handed … in all that time John never got over what happened, it was like a part of him just died without his wife. It didn't matter if we were on the front, or if he was in his office, John would sit in some dark corner and …" He paused. "He'd open up that music box and stare for hours at the ballerina figurine twirl." Derek closed his eyes as if he could still hear the music.

Sarah's chest tightened and for a moment she felt winded, closing her eyes. It was the way Derek's voice sounded and the imagery of it all. The blow had somehow traveled far across time and space to bruise her soul with a punch to the gut. Somehow she wondered what would have happened to Kyle if he had lost her. Would he have sat in the dark night after night thinking of her and only her? She looked to the stars for answers, but they told her nothing that night.

"John may have been half crazy … but he was still one of the best I'll ever see … he led with determination and will. Hell, his mind was like a clock, precise and a thousand things turning at once, each gear turning toward one simple goal … it was like he was thinking on another levels, in other dimensions, even when it looked like we were going to lose he pulled it off." Derek sighed "But even in victory it seemed so empty when you looked into that cold calculating bastard's eyes …" He trailed off. There was something painful in him that moved Sarah.

"But he started to lose a step or two toward the end." He cleared his throat and looked down. "We took some pretty nasty beatings out there in the field over the years and … it started to show on John more and more." There was something sad in Derek's voice, and it almost sounded as if he was going to cry. "How do you justify a man who had become a god to so many, and watch him get too old and outdated to matter anymore?" He chuckled more to himself than to Sarah.

"How do you?" She asked with quiet sadness for a child decades ahead of her.

Derek found his beer label suddenly interesting, looking without seeing. "You question his sanity and mock him behind his back." Derek said bitterly, it wasn't directed at John, but at himself. "You sing that goddamn song to let him know what you think about what his life has become." He said, sitting up. "Damn fools" He swigged of the last of his beer.

CRACK!

Sarah jumped when he smashed the bottle on the floor in disgust. "Burned out and too slow to rescue his wife, and too ineffective in a fight to matter on a battlefield, left to rot in some office with nothing but memories and the Metal to keep company." He motioned up to the house with his head, toward Cameron's room. "Then those smug bastards have the balls to think he's nuts when they retired him to that cell!" The soldier took a deep breath of self–loathing. When he looked at the face Sarah was making he covered his with a palm. It was the mix of alcohol and pain in his leg that was talking, opening up to Sarah about a silent shame and guilt that had weighed so heavily in his mind and heart for years it seemed.

Silently she reached out and touched Derek's shoulder. It wasn't Sarah's forgiveness that he so desperately wanted, but she had hoped that it would somehow help him to have hers. He didn't look at her as she rubbed his shoulder; with emotion he watched the woods where the harmonica played another sad tangent. Sarah's glassy eyes followed.

"It was hard on the kid the most … watching John get older, he tried to pick up the slack by himself, trying to protect his old man from that instant when someone points a plasma rifle at you and you find yourself not able to win that race like you use too." Derek sounded so old in that moment, and the beautiful woman next to him was starting to wonder if this was more than just about John, that maybe Derek was starting to feel the way John had; too slow from injuries, and too crippled to matter anymore.

"He would come and go, ranging far and wide, in search of his mother between the fights. He never gave up … he saw how much John suffered without her, and he placed too much pressure on himself to put his family back together trying to rescue her on his own … and as a result he lost his arm and eye." He sighed as if he was recounting some Greek tragedy.

Sarah had always wondered how that happened. What it had been that took his arm and eye, and now she knew. For some reason it almost made it more tragic to her that it had been a vain attempt to rescue not only his mother, but restore his family back to a whole.

"It's hard … It's hard to see history repeat itself." Derek said to himself, forgetting for a moment that Sarah was there. "He used to be one of the fastest men I've ever met … His mind was like John's, going a thousand miles an hour, and his reflexes were always right there with it. We'd go through some heavy fighting, and he'd never take a scratch." He paused. "Now … he's starting to get slower, exactly how it started with his old man … except John was big enough to take the beating, he's a Reese, a scrapper that could shake it off. Ryan's fighting style, and the way he carries himself, is all finesse and complication, like his mother … he won't last much longer if he becomes anymore like John." Derek shook his head.

Suddenly, it all made sense to Sarah. It was a cold realization that ate at her conscience. Sarah had been stupid, and had gone to check out Western Iron and Metal, only to get captured. Winston had held her for several days, playing mind games with her, stripping her naked between feeding her drugs for no better reason than to see her at her most vulnerable, to hold power over her. In truth she was almost going to give up in the back of the van as he ate sunflower seeds and mocked her like a cat with a crippled mouse. But just as it seemed over, Ryan had somehow tracked them down and broken in just in time. She had heard them fighting outside the van as she willed her way out of handcuffs. When she came on the scene Ryan was down and concussed. The anger at the sight fueled her own fight with Winston, leading her to finally kill the sadistic bastard. When Ryan came to in her arms, and he had seen the blood stains on her mouth and wrist, when he saw what she had done to protect him, he stood without a word. Since that night he couldn't look her in the eyes. She understood it now, if Derek saw it, then Ryan knew it. He was getting slow, not old, just burning out … like John. The fight he lost trying to rescue her now haunted him more than anything, like some repetitive nightmare from his childhood.

Derek stood, sucking in some cold air. The sudden movements made her glance up at him as he leaned heavily on his cane. With one last cold breath he spoke. "Now every night he sits out there waiting for the monster to come, like John use to night after night." He shook his head ruefully and sighed. "But … there's nothing out there, nothing but memories and paranoia." Derek limped away from the raven-haired beauty. "And I think that's what hurts him the most."

* * *

><p>The house was quiet for the night.<p>

Cameron took that as a kindness as she sat on the edge of her and Ryan's bed untying her ballet slippers after her nightly practice. The truth was that she didn't actually need to practice; her chip could memorize the steps and repeat them on command, yet when she had done so she found that it was less enjoyable. There was something about the sensation of doing the movements on manual control that brought on a feeling of understanding of the complex feelings human got when they concentrated.

As she moved in front of her mirror dancing to her music, she could turn off her HUD and follow the meticulous beats of the classic composition and create her own movements to it. They were new and different, not like the trained system she had been taught. They were completely her creations, her works and interpretation of what she was listening to. She never recorded or memorized the precise routines, because she found that when she listened carefully enough, she always found something new in the music each time.

There were rare times in the night when Cameron wasn't available for ones beckoning call in the house. But when she practiced for those two hours, she was lost to outside world. When she played the music and stood in the open space she found herself alone in the mix of cables and wires in her mechanical mind. In those times she would remember Derek Reese tell her that she wasn't living … it was true, but if she wasn't living, and she didn't have a soul … what was it she did every night as the house slept? When she heard classical music, and felt the need to express what the sensations told her to through ballet, what was she then?

Many of these questions plagued her in the night when Riley came over to "hang out" with John, like she was tonight. Sometimes she would sit in her room and listen to them with her long range receptors talk for hours, and hear their conversation, the tickles in their throats, and the beating of their hearts. She stopped listening to them after a while. She couldn't say why she stopped, but it was the way John's heart thumped harder when Riley was around, the way it used to when she was near him. It was a strange discomfort, a knee jerk reaction to stop listening, to reject what she was hearing, like catching herself when she was falling.

A small alert in her HUD reminded her that it was time to get dressed in her night apparel. If Riley was going to stay over, Cameron had set up some measures to make sure that there was no suspicion from the girl about her strange habits. On "Bitch Whore Nights" she changed into night clothes and locked herself in her room until Riley left, or went to sleep. Tightening her cheek, Cameron stood and strode to her dresser drawer. She grabbed a silk night slip that came down to her thighs. Carefully, she carried the smooth nightgown, and gently placed the silver slip on the bed. She silently shed her long t-shirt and slipped out of her tight training pants. Quietly she paused a moment hearing shuffling outside her door. It was the balcony at the far end of the hallway outside. Sometimes John sat out there to think or listen to what Sarah and Derek were talking about. When he went out there, she knew that it wasn't smart to bother him, just like he knew not to bother her when she was dancing.

Hearing the familiarity of the footsteps, she deduced that it wasn't an intruder, so she turned back to her task at hand, precisely unfolding the slip on top of the bed. While doing so she heard someone breathing close. She knew someone was outside her door, pausing for a moment. Then slowly the door opened fully and feet walked in. Cameron didn't rush to cover herself immediately. If it had been John or Sarah they would've knocked, and Derek never came here, so it had to be Ryan. She had learned some time ago that as long as Cameron wasn't naked, he couldn't care less how she was dressed in front of him. Apparently, in the future, she still had a bad habit of walking around in her underwear, and in his words had become "numbed" to it in his "old age". So it was rare that they said a word about the state of undress they found one another in when they walked into their room.

"Oh! … Ummm …"

Cameron turned to find that it was in fact John who had walked in on her. He was also surprisingly in his night clothing, with his hands in his pocket nervously. His green eyes were fixated on her pink satin underwear. She let him stare a moment before he caught on to what he was doing. He moved his eyes up to bore into hers. Suddenly both were frozen, unable to move like they had cast a spell over one another. Some might call it snake eyes, but Cameron preferred to call it something else, though the name escaped her. It happened sometimes, the world stopping for one brief moment in their eye contact. For a moment it was like before an explosion, no pressure, no anger. But now wasn't the time for it, especially with the door open.

"John … the door." She said not unkindly. The young man blinked hard a moment as if finding himself waking from a dream.

"Oh … yeah, right the door." He turned and closed it, with himself still inside. He turned back to her as she continued to stand in her bra and panties in front of him. A deep red spread across his face and the beat of his heart got faster. He seemed to be surprised that he didn't walk out and wait for her to be decent.

"So … you're changing." He said awkwardly scratching the side of his neck.

Cameron tilted her head. "I am …" She confirmed.

"Right …" He trailed off, not sure where to go or what to say.

Cameron looked at the bed and turned back to John. "You can sit on the bed if you want." She offered gently. The boy looked like an apple but he cleared his throat.

"No, right …" It didn't make sense how he justified the two words, but he moved and sat down on her bed. The room was quiet for a beat after the mattress squealed and John sighed nervously. There was an awkward pause before Cameron removed her slip from the bed and walked to her closet.

"I thought Riley was coming over tonight …" She said casually. Once she stepped out of his view, his heart seemed to slow, and his breathing was back to normal for the time being.

"I uh … I told her that she couldn't come over." His voice sounded confident again.

Cameron reached behind her back and unhooked her bra. "Why?" She asked sticking her head out of the closet to find that John was lying on her side of the bed looking up at the ceiling. He shrugged, not noticing she was watching him.

"I told her you were sick … like really sick. I told her that it was like Ethiopia over here … "He chuckled to himself

. Cameron placed her bra on the floor and slipped on the form fitting silk nightgown smoothly, careful to keep her ringlets. She padded out of the closet barefoot, and into the room. "I don't get sick …" She replied almost defensively, as if she took offense to the idea. The boy scowled at her as she placed her bra in the hamper near the door.

"I know you don't … I just didn't want to see her, tonight." He said in a low, slightly emotional voice. Cameron flicked her eyes his way for a moment. He was watching her, waiting for her to say something, but she just silently crossed in front of him to her vanity, squeezing some cream into her palm.

He waited for a moment longer. "Nothing?" He chuckled with stiff amusement. Cameron stared from her mirror at his reflection, rubbing the cream on her arms and neck.

"You have made yourself clear that you don't like my opinions of Riley." She said turning around to look at her mission. The teen bit his lip guiltily, and shifted his pensive eyes someplace else. It was quiet again in the room as she studied him some more; it was clear that there was something wrong with John.

Carefully the girl walked toward him and cautiously sat on the edge of the bed, her lower back touching his knee. John found her eyes again as the mattress dipped. It was that "on the verge of troubled waters" look in the boy's eyes that was classic John. A mind going a thousand miles an hour that sometimes needed a foil. In the future John often had that look, though the eyes were different then, hard and cold, deeply haunted and greatly sad when they were alone together. This younger man's eyes were sad too, but guarded around her, which was always the difference between him and his future self.

"Why don't you want to see her tonight?" Cameron asked as emotionless and nonjudgmental as possible. Sometimes, not many, but sometimes the machine like tone in her voice seemed to comfort John.

"Being with Riley …" He paused in thought. "Sometimes it feels like being drunk …" the indecision in his voice was almost as confusing to her as the metaphor.

She tilted her head. When he turned for her thoughts his eyes lightened at the reasoning that went over her head. "What I meant is when you get drunk the world seems simpler, you do things that you normally wouldn't and everything is fun … but then when you get sober and … well those things you would never do but did while drunk turned out to hurt people and the fun you thought you were having …" he sighed. "You just feel empty when it's over, empty and lonely … so you keep going back and back to the bottle to get that high." He explained.

"But it's not real …" Cameron finished for him.

"It's not real." He confirmed. "Some nights, I don't want to be that pathetic drunk. Sometimes you got to cowboy up and …." He placed his hands behind his head.

"face reality." She finished for him. John looked up at her, almost surprised at the insight she cut him off with. The girl's unreadable mask betrayed nothing to him as their stare lasted long.

"And what's my reality?" He asked finally in a low, sincere voice, looking for some sort of absolution.

Was this a trap? Cameron had the thought running through her mind. John hated when things were thrown in his face, his destiny, his role in the fate of a race of millions hiding in ash. She knew the answer, she knew what she wanted to tell him, but words only made a Connor angry, sometimes actions spoke louder than words.

John sat up in bed in silent protest when she stood and seemingly walked away from his question. The girl glided as smoothly as the silver material of her tight nightgown to the doorway; there was a quiet click, and the room went dark.

"Cameron …?" John called into the black in confusion, but she didn't reply as she walked into the middle of the room. For a moment, as she walked past the foot of the bed, a beam of moonlight caught her fully, and it made the slip glow on her body. In the small second of light she found that John wasn't nervous or scared but completely transfixed on her.

"Get under the covers." She ordered in a deadpan voice. John looked dazed as he complied, sliding under the sheets. Cameron was slow and methodical, slipping into Ryan's side of the bed herself, the side of her body rubbing against John's.

In the future there were times when she would stand guard in John's quarters as he sat in his desk reading or writing, staring at the glass case memorials of his fallen loved ones. Sometimes he didn't talk for days, but after work, and times of lulls when he needed rest, he would walk over to her, his eyes sad and tired. He would slowly remove his fingerless gauntlets, and touch the skin of her face. It was methodical how they undressed, John shirtless in fatigue pants, her in her underwear. But John would never touch her in the way that she would expect. He would always sweep her off her feet, and lay her on the bed. When he joined her, he pulled the covers over both of them. He would mutter "Angel" into her skin when he pulled her to him, holding her tightly, taking in her smell and the feel of her skin against his. She could still feel the tears as he did nothing but hug her fiercely until he fell asleep. As the sad, burned-out hero slept, it had occurred to her that someone had taken a part of John's soul many years ago, and that there was nothing that could replace her.

Now, this younger version of the man that she had come to cherish had asked her what his reality was. She answered by turning away from him onto her other side, then she reached back and draped one of his arms around her and scooted into him. He was unmoving for a moment, but slowly his body molded to hers, and he let his guard down for the night. With a shaky sigh, he pulled her close and held her ferociously like he was lost in the ocean, and she was the debris he clung to for dear life. In his soul-crushing loneliness and teenage fears of the world to come, John Connor had finally found his rock he never knew he had been missing, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he absorbed everything about the girl inside his heart and mind.

For years Cameron had been a substitute for the lost love of John Connor in the future. Cameron had always wondered who she was, and what she was like. It made her curious because of how much John loved her, and, in private, how much he longed to be with her again. But now she knew the truth of the matter. Cameron was the wife that John had longed for all those nights alone in his quarters. It was Cameron's touch, the feel of her skin against his that he missed so much, and most of all it was Cameron who was the mother of his only child.

It was clear now to the immortal cyborg that she was no longer a Future John's substitute for the missing part of his soul. She was who she was always meant to be …

She was her John's Reality.

* * *

><p>The moon hung low in the night sky, casting rays of light on the forest, it's beams shining like little spotlights, cutting through the tree canopies, illuminating the floor of the woods. The sound of frogs and crickets complemented the sound of the harmonica as it scratched out a mild tune to the night.<p>

There was something bitterly ironic to the man as he played "I'll be home for Christmas" on the last Christmas gift his mother had given him eighteen years ago. It was true that Ryan Connor was, in fact, likely to be home for Christmas surrounded by his family. The twist of irony came that these young, beautiful and handsome people he boarded with were not really his family, since he hadn't even been born yet. They shared blood, and the occasional facial feature or personality tick, but not the experiences that the soldier had. Those people, the family he could sit down and feel comfortable with, laugh at a joke with, or play pranks on were long dead, most burned and buried with the very hands that were holding the harmonica. He was the last Connor left now and it was never what it was cracked up to be.

When the song ended he finished it with a stylish riff and let the last of the notes echo before he cut if off. He gave a long sigh, closing his eyes listening to the ambient noise of the nature around him. Concentrating, he heard the slightest sound of something thumbing closer, the slither of over grown foliage in front of him.

The shotgun leaning next to him on the tree he was propped up against gave a click as he grabbed it in one sleek motion. When the object leapt out of some underbrush and looked up, the barrel of the tactical weapon was staring right down at it. Ryan held the family weapon of his childhood as smoothly and expertly as if it was a part of his arms. The grey and black fluff-ball twitched its long, floppy ear at the black cylinder and got up on its two hind legs. The rabbit's wiggly nose sniffed at the business end of the shotgun. A grudging half smile pulled at the edge of the soldier's mouth relaxing his aim.

"You know how close you were to going to that big briar patch in the sky?" He asked his new friend. The rabbit just twitched another ear and began sniffing at the sole of his motorcycle boot at the end of his outstretched leg. He snorted and returned Sarah's shotgun to its resting place next to him.

Reaching over, the raven-haired officer pulled out a branch of a plant by a stem and offered it out to the rabbit. The fur ball sniffed the leaves and began to nibble. "Sorry about that thing earlier, but if you knew my old man like I do … that old training never really goes away." He laughed to himself. The change of tone in his deep voice interested the animal for a moment before it started on another leaf. It ate a little more, stopped and looked back at him, not touching what was left. The staring contested lasted a moment.

"Well … was it good?" He asked with a quirked eyebrow. The bunny scrunched its nose and hopped away. After a beat Ryan scoffed. "Must be a woman …" He tossed the plant to the side.

He gave a good look around at his surroundings at the empty forest lit by strands of moonlight, listening to the distant sounds of a metropolis at the end of the nature trail at an overlook. Every night it was the same empty place, yet it took most of the night to make him realize what he knew all along.

"There's nothing out there …" He told himself with a regretful sigh.

His shoulder gave him some trouble as he got up. When he was younger he was able to shake off an injury, he healed quickly. Now he was twenty-eight going on fifty-five, with all the injuries he was collecting. He bared his teeth as the sting from the cut on his side; it passed with a shallow breath as he found his feet.

The setting around him seemed to be the soldier's focus again, there was a mad hope that seemed almost masochistic that _Weaver_ was hiding somewhere in the undergrowth, watching him for the right time to strike. It might be a one way show, but at least it would fill that emptiness he felt when he stared out night after night knowing that his mind was fighting a war that had been fought and lost decades in the future. He shook his head, pocketing his harmonica, and grabbing the shotgun.

He gave one last good look at the woods on the perimeter. "The liquid metal's not out there." He told himself bitterly, feeling like he was some stubborn little child not willing to admit that his mother was lost, and there was just nothing he could do about it anymore. He shook his head and began trudging out of the forest with his head down, feeling a defeat suffered long ago. He flipped the shotgun over, resting it on his shoulder, holding the barrel in hand. The gravel crunched under his boots as he emerged from the woods and into the outside lights of the large two story house on top of the hill. It was a nice house; he had thought looking over the strong brick structure.

As he made his way toward the long staircase, a pair of headlights bathed over him. Ryan froze, rather than reacting as if it were an HK's spotlight finding him. His mind knew to roll out of the way and sprint for cover, but his body was sludge. Even though it was only a slightly tipsy woman stumbling toward her door, taking the opportunity for some alone time away from the baby, it still was like an ice cold punch to Ryan's chest. He was suddenly too slow to realize that there could have had been danger; his mind was there, but his body wasn't. A helpless rage came over him as he could still see the sadistic buzzard faced bastard in the warehouse with that bloody, toothless, smug smile as he brought the crow bar against Ryan's shoulder.

He breathed out his anger in a cloud of mist in the cold night. When he blinked hard he saw Kacy watching, smiling at him seductively, she exposed a bare shoulder inviting him to come over with an index finger. Ryan had to smile at the clumsy flirting, shaking his head at her with a tired but highly amused face. She blew out an exasperated breath waving him off. He couldn't hear what she had said but he thought he heard something about a battery party.

With a stiff sigh he climbed up the stairs to the front porch, his grimy, ancient motorcycle boots made tight clicks on the cold tile walking through the dark till he reached the front door. He was as quiet as could be opening the front door. It was usually locked when he got back to the house. His mom was always saying that safety waited for no one … well she wasn't really his mom yet, but some mornings it was hard to call her Cameron and not Mom.

When that ditzy Riley girl came over, he often found himself alone in the room with Cameron, never liking her standing at the window all night, he often called her to bed. When he eventually drifted off it was hard not to smell that lilac sent and feel the familiar brush of her smooth skin and not feel like he was eight years old again, head pillowed on her stomach as she read to him, waiting for his dad to return home to them.

The memory stung his mind and before he walked inside the house he gave the forest a look and clenched his jaw. There was nothing out there, he failed his father, and he failed his mother long ago. Now it was nothing but a memory. He gave a deep breath and strode inside, closing the door behind him.

The house was quiet and still, which he took as a kindness. He was sure his old man was going to invite that Riley girl over, so he could hear them giggle the night away, and then in the morning listen to her snide comments about how weird it was that he and Cameron shared a room.

His scowl lessened when he locked the front door, which he was now sure someone had left open for him. That person was lying on the couch, an old book still clutched in her hand and a glass of finished wine on the coffee table in front of her. Sarah Connor was in a tank top and track shorts, sleeping peacefully, oblivious to him. He watched her sleep for a moment with a sad smile. She usually stayed up late, though he wasn't sure if it was because she couldn't sleep, or if she was waiting up for him.

Quietly, he shrugged out of his worn supple leather coat and draped it over her like a blanket. She sighed at the warmth and snuggled into it in a way one wouldn't expect Sarah Connor to. But then, when people slept, they were rarely themselves. He was sure Cameron could attest to that in the nights he actually stayed in the house, and wasn't somewhere else.

He paused as watched her sleep and an ugly feeling of guilt spread across his face and winced. He was still seeing the blood on her mouth and gushing from her wrist. The smell of it when he came back to consciousness cradled in her arms. When he closed his eyes he could still see the bullet hole in between Winston's eyes.

He had gotten a call from John sometime earlier that morning that Sarah had been out on a scouting mission, and that she hadn't been seen since. He had stopped at Western Iron and Metal and found her jeep hidden behind some dumpsters. When he saw the Kaliba Group logo it didn't take much time with his trained mind to track the branches of the trees to see Desert Canyon Heating and Air on the list. When he got to the McCarthy house in Charm Acres he had broken George McCarthy's nose, dislocated the man's shoulder and shattered his knee cap, all in the attempt to find where his partner had taken Ryan's sole mission. All Ryan got out of it was laughter from the man and some cell phone pictures of unconscious Sarah completely nude documenting her scars, distinguishing body marks, and her private areas for sole purpose of amusement and perversion.

Something dark turned in Ryan seeing the pictures. Sarah Connor had been his idol growing up with a single father who had nothing but tales of her for his suddenly motherless son. Ryan had kept a picture of Sarah with him all his life, when he was alone in the deserts and frigid plans hunting for his mother, she had been his constant companion. Her face and his father's stories had kept him company in the long nights and lonely times. Now, just like with his mother, someone had taken her, mocking him on his search. Channeling a cold ruthlessness he had learned from the only parent Ryan ever had, he forced McCarthy to surrender the location of the van, but only after Ryan broke Zoe McCarthy's arm in three places.

When he got to the warehouse, Winston had been sitting on the hood eating the last of a bag of sunflower seeds. The fight was blurry, but he knew he had disarmed him rather quickly. The mercenary was run of the mill mediocre at best, he remembered thinking. Classic basic training, straight forward military hand-to-hand. Ryan had been trained by men such as I-Chin and the Mad Monk of Lashana … he learned sophisticated and sleek systems of fighting. Ryan had been highly trained in extreme hand-to-hand combat, he was the better fighter by a mile. At first it seemed and looked like it. He had Winston bleeding and had knocked out several teeth from a well-placed kick to the mouth. But the trouble was that he was starting to miss the nerve points, he was settling for body shots, instead of take down blows, his mind was there seeing what he was going to do before he did it and yet his reflexes couldn't keep up like they always had. The psycho had gotten lucky with a jab that sent Ryan reeling; when Winston grabbed the crow bar off the ground Ryan had thought he had him, but for some reason he couldn't avoid the swings, he couldn't move himself out of the vicinity. Two straight blows, and he was on the concrete as the bastard hit him twice more, and that was all she wrote.

Sarah still didn't stir even when he was kneeling next to her. He suddenly found it hard to hide the mist in his eyes. He had felt ashamed that he could not stop her from committing her first murder. He had felt somehow that he had let her down, that his body was starting to let him down.

"_I'm sorry" _He whispered. _"I … I was just a little slow, the other night … just a little too slow." _He repeated hauntedly, a silent disbelief that he was saying words he had heard his father drunkenly whisper to a twirling ballerina in a music box time after time. He cleared his throat quietly; he leaned forward and kissed Sarah's cheek gently before standing. He took a deep breath and picked up the shotgun put it back in place.

"Did you get it?"

Ryan paused at the umbrella holder near the living room, hearing Sarah's voice. He flushed just a little now, knowing that she wasn't asleep for his apology and peck to her cheek. Not turning around to face her, Ryan continued on his path. He flicked on the safety and slid the weapon in.

"Get what?" He asked casually.

"The monster that took your mother … did you kill it?"

The question made him stop on a dime, he figured that Derek was running his mouth again and that's how she found out about that story. It took him a long moment to answer her.

"Every night …" His voice was hardened and hushed, a sense of dark vengeance silently dripping off the words like an old leaky faucet.

"Then what happens?"

Ryan looked down at his father's old boots. "Then I wake up … and I try hard to forget what that one moment of absolution I'll never have feels like." He turned around to face her.

Sarah was still lying on the couch; her green eyes seemed to glow in the lamp light, ceaselessly watching him. She wore a mask of pensive stone, the light bathing her beauty in a low almost golden, ethereal glow that Ryan was sure he was imagining. She finally tore her eyes away from him with a breath. "Was their …" She sat up keeping his jacket tight around her, it was a silent invitation to sit down next to her. "Was there a chance, a moment, maybe even a window when it was possible …?" She asked opened ended.

Ryan rotated his jaw in thought. "You mean to kill it?" He asked walking back to the couch.

"Yes" Sarah nodded.

There was a thump when he sat close to her on the loveseat. She didn't seem to mind the closeness, and neither did he; it was cold outside and she was very warm. He thought about her question bitterly.

"I punched it, kicked it, Shot it, stabbed it, slashed it, and blasted it with a shotgun and grenade launcher." He listed off, sighing and looking to green eyes staring at him closely, sympathetically. "How do you kill a Hydra without a heart?" he asked thoughtfully.

The question silenced Sarah for a moment. "How do you?" She shrugged a bare shoulder, ruffling her hair in thought, leaning a raised elbow on the head cushion of the couch.

He breathed shallowly. "You make sure it's never born." He answered with a quiet conviction as if he had reminded himself why he was there.

A grim commiseration of a smile graced her lips. "You make sure it's never born." She repeated looking down at his lap. When she looked up Ryan's face lightened and he was smiling at her. They both laughed for some reason that neither could exactly fathom why.

"Good book?" he asked, veiling the outright question of why she wasn't asleep in her room. Ryan knew that she and Derek had been sharing since he hurt his leg, and it was widely known to everyone that neither was sleeping on the floor either.

Sarah paused like a deer in the headlights, it was becoming obvious why she was on the couch and not in bed sleeping next to Derek. "Couldn't sleep …" She hid her lie with a scowl. If she knew that he knew that she waited up for him most nights then she hid it well.

"It is one of those nights …" He sighed looking out the window at the moon glowing like a flashlight outside.

She smiled an almost maternal smile at him when he wasn't looking, reaching out to smooth the black loose curls on his head like she would if it was John. But when he turned back slowly she removed her hand before he saw it. "Yes it is." She agreed. The two didn't say anything else as a comfortable silence filled the house again.

"Going to bed?" She asked after a minute. Ryan rubbed his stubble as if she had asked a dreaded question.

"I uh … I don't sleep well anymore." He responded hesitantly, though he tried to cover it the best he could, he knew she had caught on to what haunted him; it had been the failed rescue attempt. From the corner of his eye he could see that Sarah's eyes darkened at the subtext of the why.

"I don't either." Her voice was hushed.

The two knew what the other was saying without a word, Sarah dreamed of a dead man every night, with a wife who wore pearls to the man's first funeral. Ryan dreamed of one day being too late to matter anymore, mourning in the dark with only a music box to keep him company.

There was a click and noise filled the room. The light of the television made Ryan squint when Sarah turned off the lamp. Next to him, she reached over her side of the couch and pulled out a throw blanket. When he quirked an eyebrow at her, she gave a slight smirk covering both of them. She began flicking through the channels before settling on a movie that she made a slight nostalgic sigh. It was an eighty's teen movie, something about candles. As he began watching it with interest at the foreign style of slang and setting, he felt Sarah gently place her head on his shoulder. He smiled and gently wrapped an arm around her.

And for a night there was peace in the household.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes <strong>

_**This story was very hard to write emotionally because this was the very last time I would be writing Ryan Connor of the bad future. He was a character I've worked on since I decided to start writing for TSCC Fan Fiction. So now his story is at an end … **_

_**The whole point of Ryan's fears from his past and the overall message of this story series was to show how dependent John is on Cameron, how much he needs her. I admit that I had done a piss poor job in the other story of conveying how far and hard John fell in the future with Cameron being taken from him and it opened the flood gates for the haters and whiners to plague me and question my dignity and Sanity with their small minded notions of what it was all about. Well, let me make this very Clear It was never *EVER* about John and Sarah … it was about how lost a man of flesh and blood, became when someone took a part of his soul and how desperate he was to fill that hole in him that he became too old and slow to rescue.**_

_**If you follow me on Twitter (and wouldn't you) then you know my logic for the slowing down of the Connors Bodies was based on the Longevity of a NFL player and his ability to take poundings and how after a decade some just aren't what they use to be IE "Loosing a step or Two". My father telling me about Tony Dorsett and Roger Staubach of THE Dallas Cowboys helped me. **_

_**So like I said "Where Shall I Go?" By Connie Dover is the song Derek sings (some lyrics are changed by me) **_

_**My Jameron Love Theme is "Longing" on the Inuyasha Soundtrack. Whenever I think of John/Cameron in any context (Present or future) in this story series that's the song that's in my head.**_

_**If your imagination is prodded by the back story of the five year trek around the world chasing the monster who took Cameron or Ryan's Training by I-Chin and the "Mad Monk" of Lasahana then listen to "Brother Kyoudia" from the "Fullmetal Alchemist" Soundtrack **_

_**All songs are on Youtube. **_

_**Ash Miller once said that to be a good writer sometimes you need to treat these characters like they were real and you get to understand them more … I've done that with my OC and I hope the Ryan Connor character and his level of devotion and Love he has to his family (Alot to Sarah) made an impression on you guys, that he mattered to those few loyal readers here at the end. **_


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